Democratization of Realpolitick - AAA comes up to the big leagues

Originally written on August 11th, 2003 for my "Liberty Politics" list on Yahoo Groups. Reposted here as an extension of my comments to a recent post over at Yelnick's Politick

I've gone on [elsewhere] at some considerable length about the
'democratization of destruction' that global technological and social trends
have brought about.

What has been less discussed in this forum, but is equally important, is the
levelling of the playing field between the 'first tier' of countries and the
second-third tier. It's as if, in American baseball terms, the AAA teams
began to play in the major leagues. Or for all you Brits, if the Premier
League and the first division were suddenly integrated.
Here is a list of the top 22 countries by population, 2003:

1 China 1,286,975,468
2 India 1,049,700,118
3 United States 290,342,554
4 Indonesia 234,893,453
5 Brazil 182,032,604
6 Pakistan 150,694,740
7 Russia 144,526,278
8 Bangladesh 138,448,210
9 Nigeria 133,881,703
10 Japan 127,214,499
11 Mexico 103,718,062
12 Philippines 84,619,974
13 Germany 82,398,326
14 Vietnam 81,624,716
15 Egypt 74,718,797
16 Iran 68,278,826
17 Turkey 68,109,469
18 Ethiopia 66,557,553
19 Thailand 64,265,276
20 France 60,180,529
21 United Kingdom 60,094,648
22 Italy 57,998,353

handy USG link for forward and backward population projections:

Here are the ranks for 2020:
1 China 1,424,064,346
2 India 1,296,848,219
3 United States 336,031,546
4 Indonesia 287,890,561
5 Brazil 211,507,717
6 Pakistan 199,744,808
7 Bangladesh 189,861,451
8 Nigeria 189,118,674
9 Russia 138,977,962
10 Mexico 124,653,623
11 Japan 123,254,059
12 Philippines 111,343,388
13 Vietnam 99,894,445
14 Egypt 97,294,896
15 Congo (Kinshasa) 92,008,771
16 Ethiopia 85,965,178
17 Iran 82,151,319
18 Germany 81,422,373
19 Turkey 79,678,914
20 Thailand 71,893,534
21 United Kingdom 63,068,016
22 France 62,817,497

What we see here is that Europe and Japan are falling off the map; the
United States is hanging in there as a major player; a whole new 'second
tier' of regional powers are growing, and will likely challenge the current
status quo in their attempts to assert a more balanced international role;
and that China and India are bigger than nearly everyone else put together.
The other obvious point here is that many of the emerging regional powers
are Islamic, Asian, and have huge oil reserves.

Islamic, 2020 population list:

4 Indonesia 287,890,561
6 Pakistan 199,744,808
7 Bangladesh 189,861,451
8 Nigeria (partial) 189,118,674
14 Egypt 97,294,896
16 Ethiopia (partial) 85,965,178
17 Iran 82,151,319
19 Turkey 79,678,914

That's 1.2 billion Muslims in just 8 countries.

Asian, 2020 list:

1 China 1,424,064,346
2 India 1,296,848,219
4 Indonesia 287,890,561
6 Pakistan 199,744,808
7 Bangladesh 189,861,451
11 Japan 123,254,059
12 Philippines 111,343,388
13 Vietnam 99,894,445
20 Thailand 71,893,534

That's 3.7 billion Asians.

Major oil producers, 2020 list:

4 Indonesia 234,893,453
5 Brazil 182,032,604
6 Pakistan 150,694,740
7 Russia 144,526,278
9 Nigeria 133,881,703
11 Mexico 103,718,062
16 Iran 68,278,826
21 United Kingdom 60,094,648

That's a billion people attached to a majority of the world's oil. Note
that none of those billion people are Americans, and only a handful of them
are white Europeans.

None of those three lists (Islam, oil, Asia) are dominated by the sorts of
"first tier" countries we Americans are used to thinking about. Places like
Russia, Japan, Germany, and Britain -- the major players of the past 150
years, the guys who had railroads and tanks and top hats and colonies. They
are dominated by former colonies, regional powers with big and growing
populations, strong cultures which are divergent from our own (Asian or
Islamic), and often, by ownership of significant resources which we *need*
to continue our current way of life. This is a changing landscape, which
will have dramatic impact on how we conduct our foreign relations.
Our little war in Iraq (and the absence of war in North Korea) have
dramatically demonstrated three key points to the world:

1) America can overthrow any government/military in the world, with little
effort or cost, in very short order, simply by invading with our amazing
technology.

2) America cannot afford, either fiscally or emotionally, to commit to the
level and volume of interaction over long periods of time which is required
to truly change the social/political situation within any country.

3) If you have nukes, and preferably missiles as well, America will not
overthrow your government, out of fear of your reprisals and response on its
own territory, allies, and interests.

That is a high-level stand-off, just like the democratized power to destroy
is a lower-level standoff. We can take out any government, but we can't fix
any country -- we can destroy but not make. Any government can be
overthrown by us, but nearly any society can resist our attempts to change
it, simply by inertia and guerilla tactics. This means that while there may
be fuss and bother around the edges, the major trend over the next few
decades will be the solidification and formalization of a system of regional
powers, which will almost entirely be driven by the triple weighting factor
of strong culture, population size, and resources. You can predict how the
world will look in 2020 by seeing who are the large, wealthy,
civilized/cultured countries in any given region.

This leads to new (for us) and strange (for us) situations like Liberia,
where we are currently heavily depending on Nigeria (Nigeria?!) to sort out
local democracy and stability issues. Nigera is a mess, but it's a huge
regional power, which has huge energy resources, and also coincidentally has
major internal issues with Islamic fundamentalism which have brought it into
the "global war on terror" as both an object and an actor. Regardless of
the morality of the situation, realpolitik means that we need Nigeria on our
side; in the same way we need Indonesia, Pakistan, and Russia on our side,
but can take or leave Britain, Germany and France.

Slate has an interesting article on Nigeria and its peacekeeping entry into Liberia:

What's most important to us all is that America both manage its own position
within the emerging world order, and manage a relatively smooth and peaceful
transition of that emerging world order. That's the big problem of the day,
and of the decade.

Here is my top list of global players, 2020 (in approximate order)

1) America
2) India
3) China
4) Nigeria
5) Indonesia
6) Russia
7) Iran
8) Brazil
9) Mexico

Wild cards here include coalitions (if the EU sorts itself out as a single
entity, it can be a major player) and regional competition effects -- e.g.
what influence will China and India have upon each other, and how will the
combination of China, Vietnam, Indonesia, Philippines sort itself out as
they collide over resources, economic production, etc.? Will Japan
reinvigorate itself, or fade away?

It's going to be an interesting world. May we be blessed with good luck and
great leaders.